This book is a lot of "inside baseball": painstaking details about the political process inside the White House, including how each protagonist felt and emoted about each phase of each issue. It's the sort of book that OnTheIssues hates -- it interests pundits and insiders, and disgusts normal voters. This one is better than most, because the author is Bob Woodward, one of the insiderest of insiders (he broke the Watergate scandal). But it's still full of the self-importance of "Look who I have access to!" and "See, I can write about the daily details from several different people's perspectives!" Who cares? We all know the process is disgusting; why disgust us more?

As an example, pp. 150 through 161 details one bill's route through Congress, sort of like the old educational TV clip, "I'm just a bill, sittin' here on Capitol Hill," except written for grown-ups and occupying many thousands of words instead of a snippy song. Woodward covers the inner workings of the White House, AND their strategy for the House, AND their separate strategy for the Senate.

Another section details minute by minute a particular vote in the House. Yes, literally, minute by minute, with the number of minutes remaining counted down interminably, and then just when you think it might be over, the customary 15-minute delay is tacked on, and another minute-by-minute countdown ensues. Evidently WHEN in the voting sequence a Member of Congress votes matters a lot to Members of Congress -- they promise "I won't kill the bill," which really means "I won't be the deciding vote against it", and the deciding vote is determined only when enough other votes have been cast or have not been cast. And evidently "momentum" counts too, since with the final dozen holdouts in that minute-by-minute countdown, several of those members might have promised Clinton they'd vote Yes only if needed (i.e., they'd make their constituents happy, and their re-election chances better, by voting No, unless the vote would otherwise lose), and some members might amend their votes too. Yikes.

From Woodward's perspective, this level of detail exposes the detailed process that citizens never otherwise get to see. In his introduction, Woodward notes that this book spans the realms of "news" and "history." Yes, it feels like an historical record -- perhaps it will become relevant to future historians at which meeting which participants got ill, or which cusswords Clinton used when bawling out which Cabinet member at that same event, and whether the cusswords were related to the illnesses. As Woodward also notes in the introduction, sometimes he interviewed 10 people up to 20 times to get those sorts of details of each such event accurately recorded. Yikes again.

It's just too much detail for anyone except consummate insiders. Look elsewhere if you want to read about Clinton or Gore.

-- Jesse Gordon, jesse@OnTheIssues.org, July 2012

Woodward has several other books excerpted by OnTheIssues, some of which are a little less tedious to read:

Health CareBill Clinton: We cannot get deficit to zero until we address health costs.
Hillary Clinton: $100B to get started on healthcare reform.
John Rockefeller: $100B on healthcare reform requires large new unpopular tax.